Yes Tom's contract cards will be a must for many builds, especially for those which are military or criminal, possibly the civilian builds too but won't be so essential for scientists as their ships have their own life support system. The scientists will be probably the best build for those hostile planets, meaning that the capacity to survive on those leaves you the only problem of defending them from hostiles outside the planet.

Also those scientists ships have a lot of cargo space. (The Orwell I has 14! slots)